The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (Penguin Great Ideas)
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The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (Penguin Great Ideas)
... See moreCulture has to follow the dominant modes of perception of a given era. While a twentieth-century building might have been designed to be photographed, the twenty-first century work of art is “designed for reproducibility” through algorithmic feeds…They each contribute and conform to a generic, flattened, reproducible aesthetic. Hence the general st
The Romantic revolution completed this transformation, making art primarily about the artist's inner life rather than communal service. The work's value came to rest not in technical excellence or community function but in its capacity to express the artist's unique subjectivity. This created what Agamben calls the "artistic machine", a Borromean k... See more
The Curatorial Turn
In his justly celebrated essay, “The Work of Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Walter Benjamin sets forth the idea, now almost commonplace, that the copying and disseminating of, say, a painting robs it of its aura. “Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique ex
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